The Vatican should not cede selection of bishops in China to the Communist Party.
Under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control, China has shown itself to be an extraordinarily dictatorial and authoritarian nation. All kinds of freedoms that are taken for granted in the West—freedom of expression, of the media, of religion—are not only denied under CCP rule but routinely and often violently repressed. Human rights activists and lawyers disappear and are tortured, while alternative political parties are crushed. Calls for justice are met with the iron hand of the state. Muslims have been rounded up in the hundreds of thousands and forced into re-education camps in China’s Xinjiang Province. This is a regime that will use any means to maintain its monopoly on power. It is also a regime that knows how to present itself to the West, saying and doing the right things to draw support from leaders abroad. Its veneer of civility is an attempt to cover up the reality of its immorality.
I grew up under this Party-State system and personally experienced the Communist Party’s violence and brutality, and I have known and worked with countless individuals in China who have been persecuted for their beliefs. It has thus been with intense shock and dismay that I have watched the Vatican’s rapprochement with China take shape.
China’s View of Religion
What we currently know of the agreement is that the Vatican will cede selection of bishops in China to the Communist Party. In exchange, the CCP will recognize the pope as the official head of the Catholic Church, and regular relations between the two states will be renewed.
The fact that the Vatican sees these terms as an acceptable basis for reconciliation with a brutal dictatorial regime is a slap in the face to millions.......
#1: paraclete To: A K A Stone (#0)
paraclete posted on 2018-11-27 22:50:02 Reply Private Reply
#2: A K A Stone To: paraclete (#1)
A K A Stone posted on 2018-11-28 09:26:51 Reply Private Reply
#3: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#2)
A K A Stone posted on 2018-11-28 09:27:18 Reply Private Reply
#4: paraclete To: A K A Stone (#2)
The Pope is not infallible, and particularly not if he endorses those things that go against the commandments of God. How can a fallible man declare himself infallible
paraclete posted on 2018-11-28 16:25:15 Reply Private Reply
#5: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#3)
As with the Concordat after the French Revolution, making an agreement like this with a state that has elements in it that are quite hostile and violent towards the Church, protects Catholics. Once the Church is formally recognized in a treaty, and a method of selecting high clergy is found that is not threatening to the state and acceptable to Rome, things can rapidly improve in the lives of Catholics in a place like post-Revolutionary France or Red China.
The Chinese government is Communist. They don't like religion and are suspicious of anything that looks like foreign allegiance.
Given your position on dual citizenship, Stone, I guess it has not occurred to you that Catholics have something very much like dual citizenship between America and the Catholic Church, given that the Pope is the ruler of a country, a foreign prince, and given the degree of allegiance that the Church has among Catholics.
States do well when they are able to work out something that lets people be citizens of the state AND Catholic, given that Catholics are inherently law-and- order statists by religious nature.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-11-28 17:11:04 Reply Private Reply
#6: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#5)
A K A Stone posted on 2018-11-28 19:36:59 Reply Private Reply
#7: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#6)
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-11-29 07:23:19 Reply Private Reply
#8: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#7)
A K A Stone posted on 2018-11-29 07:47:01 Reply Private Reply
#9: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#8)
Nah. I get along with Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Congregationalists, Anglicans and Quakers just fine. I don't think they're rotten from the beginning.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-11-29 14:55:09 Reply Private Reply
#10: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#9)
Gee Vic all the churches you like are faggot churches except the Jehovas I believe.
And you like them and don't think they are rotten. by their fruits ye shall know them. Your fruit is rotten stinks worse then cat shit.
It is not surprising since you attend a faggot church too.
At least you are consistent. You said you weren't a christian (follower of Christ).
A K A Stone posted on 2018-11-29 21:41:12 Reply Private Reply
#11: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#5)
Satanic.
You are worse then I thought.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-11-29 21:42:39 Reply Private Reply
#12: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#11)
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-11-30 06:51:59 Reply Private Reply
#13: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#10)
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-11-30 06:52:26 Reply Private Reply
#14: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#13)
I do like Baptists though.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-11-30 08:04:36 Reply Private Reply
#15: paraclete To: A K A Stone (#2)
what nonsense is this, I don't follow the Catholic Church, I am a Christian, not a Marist, big difference
paraclete posted on 2018-12-16 22:24:04 Reply Private Reply
#16: A K A Stone To: paraclete (#15)
I should maybe cut his some slack though.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-12-16 22:26:53 Reply Private Reply